DWG export & XRef issues

[Haneef Tayob]

Just picked up this problem, which we managed to work around, but this has raised some questions.
Recently we found on one project that we could suddenly not publish to .DWG if we chose the 'Paper space with cropped contents' in the translator. We're able to publish using some of the other autocad paper/modelspace options, but these option are not suitable for us. PDF exports are also fine.
Other project did not seem to have the problem.

We tried redoing the translator to no avail.

For this project, we've been placing a number of .DWG Xref's into our drawing on stories below our main stories for coordination. I noticed that whilst publishing to DWG, the error message pops up after a folder with a number of XRef's was written. The final .DWG is not written. I then tried removing some XRef's in the project and the translator worked. It appears that there was a problem with one of the XRefs we imported and Archicad was unable to export that Xref.

What is strange is that even if I published layouts which did not have any XRef's in their layouts, the publishing process seems to try writing all the Xref's we've placed in the project.

[Thomas Holm]

Publishing Paper space with cropped contents is a complicated process for the program when you are using many XREFs.

I'd try this:
- Only attach XREFs using Overlay to avoid nested references as much as possible.
- Check that there are no layouts or included drawings that have Trace and Reference activated.
- Turn off True line weight/width before Publishing to DWG
- Unlock all layers within the XREFs (i. e. within the drawings/views that have XREFs attached)

If you can spot the offending XREF, and the above doesn't work, try to import it by MERGE it into a .PLN of its own, then save that as a .MOD and hotlink it into the project instead of xrefing it. MERGE is the most flexible DWG import option, all others cripple the translator settings in one way or another.

And, if you often collaborate with Autocad users this way, consider using the KeepIndexNumber translator. It will require you to use an Autocad-like Pen&Color table, but once implemented, it will save you many headaches, especially when doing round-trip translations.